"The usual story is that I was down close to the wall behind Maxwell's bed. This was not the case, for the bed was close against the wall. Pete Maxwell was lying in bed, right here in this corner, as I said. I was sitting in a chair and leaning over toward him, as I talked in a low tone. My right side was toward him, and my revolver was on that side. I did not know that the Kid was so close at hand, or, indeed, know for sure that he was there in the settlement at all.

"Maxwell did not want to talk very much. He knew the Kid was there, and knew his own danger. I was talking to him in Spanish, in a low tone of voice, as I say, when the Kid came over here, just as I have told you. He saw Poe and McKinney sitting right out there in the moonlight, but did not suspect anything. 'Quien es?'—'Who is it?'—he asked, as he passed them. I heard him speak and saw him come backing into the room, facing toward Poe and McKinney. He could not see me, as it was dark in the room, but he came up to the bed where Maxwell was lying and where I was sitting. He seemed to think something might not be quite right. He had in his hand his revolver, a self-cocking .41. He could not see my face, and he had not heard my voice, or he would have known me.

"The Kid stepped up to the bedside and laid his left hand on the bed and bent over Maxwell. He saw me sitting there in the half darkness, but did not recognize me, as I was sitting down. My height would have betrayed me had I been standing. 'Pete, Quien es?' he asked in a low tone of voice; and he half motioned toward me with his six-shooter. That was when I looked across into eternity. It wasn't far to go.

"That was exactly how the thing was. I gave neither Maxwell nor the Kid time for anything farther. There flashed over my mind at once one thought, and it was that I had to shoot and shoot at once, and that my shot must go to the mark the first time. I knew the Kid would kill me in a flash if I did not kill him.

"Just as he spoke and motioned toward me, I dropped over to the left and rather down, going after my gun with my right hand as I did so. As I fired, the Kid dropped back. I had caught him just about the heart. His pistol, already pointed toward me, went off as he fell, but he fired high. As I sprang up, I fired once more, but did not hit him, and did not need to, for he was dead.

"I don't know that he ever knew who it was that killed him. He could not see me in the darkness. He may have seen me stoop over and pull. If he had had the least suspicion who it was, he would have shot as soon as he saw me. When he came to the bed, I knew who he was. The rest happened as I have told you. There is no other story about the killing of Billy the Kid which is the truth. It is also untrue that his body was ever removed from Fort Sumner. It lies there to-day, and I'll show you where we buried him. I laid him out myself, in this house here, and I ought to know."

Twenty-five years of time had done their work in all that country, as we learned when we entered the little barbed-wire enclosure of the cemetery where the Kid and his fellows were buried. There are no headstones in this cemetery, and no sacristan holds its records. Again Garrett had to search in the salt grass and greasewood. "Here is the place," said he, at length. "We buried them all in a row. The first grave is the Kid's, and next to him is Bowdre, and then O'Folliard."

Here was the sole remaining record of the man hunt's end. So passes the glory of the world! In this desolate resting-place, in a wind-swept and forgotten graveyard, rests all the remaining fame of certain bad men who in their time were bandit kings, who ruled by terror over half a Western territory. Even the headboard which once stood at the Kid's grave—and which was once riddled with bullets by cowards who would not have dared to shoot that close to him had he been alive—was gone. It is not likely that the graves will be visited again by any one who knows their locality. Garrett looked at them in silence for a time, then, turning, went to the buckboard for a drink at the canteen. "Well," said he, quietly, "here's to the boys, anyway. If there is any other life, I hope they'll make better use of it than they did of the one I put them out of."



Chapter XIX

Bad Men of Texas—The Lone Star State Always a Producer of Fighters—A Long History of Border War—The Death of Ben Thompson.

A review of the story of the American desperado will show that he has always been most numerous at the edge of things, where there was a frontier, a debatable ground between civilization and lawlessness, or a border between opposing nations or sections. He does not wholly pass away with the coming of the law, but his home is essentially in a new and undeveloped condition of society. The edge between East and West, between North and South, made the territory of the bad man of the American interior.

The far Southwest was the oldest of all American frontiers, and the stubbornest. We have never, as a nation, been at war with any other nation whose territory has adjoined our own except in the case of Mexico; and long before we went to war as a people against Mexico, Texas had been at war with her as a state, or rather as a population and a race against another race. The frontier of the Rio Grande is one of the bloodiest of the world, and was such long before Texas was finally admitted to the union. There was never any new territory settled by so vigorous and belligerent a population as that which first found and defended the great empire of the Lone Star. Her early men were, without exception, fighters, and she has bred fighters ever since.

The allurement which the unsettled lands of the Southwest had for the young men of the early part of the last century lay largely in the appeal of excitement and adventure, with a large possibility of worldly gain as well. The men of the South who drifted down the old River Road across Mississippi and Louisiana were shrewd in their day and generation. They knew that eventually Texas would be taken away from Mexico, and taken by force. Her vast riches would belong to those who had earned them. Men of the South were even then hunting for another West, and here was a mighty one. The call came back that the fighting was good all along the line; and the fighting men of all the South, from Virginia to Louisiana, fathers and sons of the boldest and bravest of Southern families, pressed on and out to take a hand. They were scattered and far from numerous when they united and demanded a government of their own, independent of the far-off and inefficient head of the Mexican law. They did not want Coahuila as their country, but Texas, and asked a government of their own. Lawless as they were, they wanted a real law, a law of Saxon right and justice.

Men like Crockett, Fannin, Travers and Bowie were influenced half by political ambition and half by love of adventure when they moved across the plains of eastern Texas and took up their abode on the firing line of the Mexican border. If you seek a historic band of bad men, fighting men of the bitterest Baresark type, look at the immortal defenders of the Alamo. Some of them were, in the light of calm analysis, little better than guerrillas; but every man was a hero. They all had a chance to escape, to go out and join Sam Houston farther to the east; but they refused to a man, and, plying the border weapons as none but such as themselves might, they died, full of the glory of battle; not in ranks and shoulder to shoulder, with banners and music to cheer them, but each for himself and hand to hand with his enemy, a desperate fighting man.

The early men of Texas for generations fought Mexicans and Indians in turn. The country was too vast for any system of law. Each man had learned to depend upon himself. Each cabin kept a rifle and pistol for each male old enough to bear them, and each boy, as he grew up, was skilled in weapons and used to the thought that the only arbitrament among men was that of weapons. Part of the population, appreciating the exemptions here to be found, was, without doubt, criminal; made up of men who had fled, for reasons of their own, from older regions. These in time required the attention of the law; and the armed bodies of hard-riding Texas rangers, a remedy born of necessity, appeared as the executives of the law.

The cattle days saw the wild times of the border prolonged. The buffalo range caught its quota of hard riders and hard shooters. And always the apparently exhaustless empires of new and unsettled lands—an enormous, untracked empire of the wild—beckoned on and on; so that men in the most densely settled sections were very far apart, and so that the law as a guardian could not be depended upon. It was not to be wondered at that the name of Texas became the synonym for savagery. That was for a long time the wildest region within our national confines. Many men who attained fame as fighters along the Pecos and Rio Grande and Gila and Colorado came across the borders from Texas. Others slipped north into the Indian Nations, and left their mark there. Some went to the mines of the Rockies, or the cattle ranges from Montana to Arizona. Many stayed at home, and finished their eventful lives there in the usual fashion—killing now and again, then oftener, until at length they killed once too often and got hanged; or not often enough once, and so got shot.

To undertake to give even the most superficial study to a field so vast as this would require a dozen times the space we may afford, and would lead us far into matters of history other than those intended. We can only point out that the men of the Lone Star state left their stamp as horsemen and weapon-bearers clear on to the north, and as far as the foot of the Arctic circle. Their language and their methods mark the entire cattle business of the plains from the Rio Grande to the Selkirks. Theirs was a great school for frontiersmen, and its graduates gave full account of themselves wherever they went. Among them were bad men, as bad as the worst of any land, and in numbers not capable of compass even in a broad estimate.

Some citizens of Montgomery county, Texas, were not long ago sitting in a store of an evening, and they fell to counting up the homicides which had fallen under their notice in that county within recent memory. They counted up seventy-five authenticated cases, and could not claim comprehensiveness for their tally. Many a county of Texas could do as well or better, and there are many counties. It takes you two days to ride across Texas by railway. A review of the bad man field of Texas pauses for obvious reasons!

So many bad men of Texas have attained reputation far wider than their state that it became a proverb upon the frontier that any man born on Texas soil would shoot, just as any horse born there would "buck." There is truth back of most proverbs, although to-day both horses and men of Texas are losing something of their erstwhile bronco character. That out of such conditions, out of this hardy and indomitable population, the great state could bring order and quiet so soon and so permanently over vast unsettled regions, is proof alike of the fundamental sternness and justness of the American character and the value of the American fighting man.

Yet, though peace hath her victories not less than war, it is to be doubted whether in her own heart Texas is more proud of her statesmen and commercial kings than of her stalwart fighting men, bred to the use of arms. The beautiful city of San Antonio is to-day busy and prosperous; yet to-day you tread there ground which has been stained red over and over again. The names of Crockett, Milam, Travis, Bowie, endure where those of captains of industry are forgotten. Out of history such as this, covering a half century of border fighting, of frontier travel and merchandising, of cattle trade and railroad building, it is impossible—in view of the many competitors of equal claims—to select an example of bad eminence fit to bear the title of the leading bad man of Texas.

There was one somewhat noted Texas character, however, whose life comes down to modern times, and hence is susceptible of fairly accurate review—a thing always desirable, though not often practical, for no history is more distorted, not to say more garbled, than that dealing with the somewhat mythical exploits of noted gun fighters. Ben Thompson, of Austin, killer of more than twenty men, and a very perfect exemplar of the creed of the six-shooter, will serve as instance good enough for a generic application. Thompson was not a hero. He did no deeds of war. He led no forlorn hope into the imminent deadly breach. His name is preserved in no history of his great commonwealth. He was in the opinion of certain peace officers, all that a citizen should not be. Yet in his way he reached distinction; and so striking was his life that even to-day he does not lack apologists, even as he never lacked friends.

Ben Thompson was of English descent, and was born near Lockhart, Texas, according to general belief, though it is stated that he was born in Yorkshire, England. Later his home was in Austin, where he spent the greater part of his life, though roaming from place to place. Known as a bold and skillful gun man, he was looked on as good material for a hunter of bad men, and at the time of his death was marshal of police at Austin. In personal appearance Thompson looked the part of the typical gambler and gun fighter. His height was about five feet eight inches, and his figure was muscular and compact. His hair was dark and waving; his eyes gray. He was very neat in dress, and always took particular pains with his footwear, his small feet being always clad in well-fitting boots of light material, a common form of foppery in a land where other details of dress were apt to be carelessly regarded. He wore a dark mustache which, in his early years, he was wont to keep waxed to points. In speech he was quiet and unobtrusive, unless excited by drink. With the six-shooter he was a peerless shot, an absolute genius, none in all his wide surrounding claiming to be his superior; and he had a ferocity of disposition which grew with years until he had, as one of his friends put it, "a craving to kill people." Each killing seemed to make him desirous of another. He thus came to exercise that curious fascination which such characters have always commanded. Fear he did not know, or at least no test arising in his somewhat varied life ever caused him to show fear. He passed through life as a wild animal, ungoverned by the law, rejoicing in blood; yet withal he was held as a faithful friend and a good companion. To this day many men repel the accusation that he was bad, and maintain that each of his twenty killings was done in self-defense. The brutal phase of his nature was no doubt dominant, even although it was not always in evidence. He was usually spoken of as a "good fellow," and those who palliate or deny most of his wild deeds declare that local history has never been as fair to him as he deserved.

Thompson's first killing was while he was a young man at New Orleans, and according to the story, arose out of his notions of chivalry. He was passing down the street in a public conveyance, in company of several young Creoles, who were going home from a dance in a somewhat exhilarated condition. One or two of the strangers made remarks to an unescorted girl, which Thompson construed to be offensive, and he took it upon himself to avenge the insult to womanhood. In the affray that followed he killed one of the young men. For this he was obliged to flee to old Mexico, taking one of the boats down the river. He returned presently to Galveston, where he set up as a gambler, and began to extend his reputation as a fighting man. Most of his encounters were over cards or drink or women, the history of many or most of the border killings.

Thompson's list grew steadily, and by the time he was forty years of age he had a reputation far wider than his state. In all the main cities of Texas he was a figure more or less familiar, and always dreaded. His skill with his favorite weapon was a proverb in a state full of men skilled with weapons. Moreover, his disposition now began to grow more ugly, sullen and bloodthirsty. He needed small pretext to kill a man if, for the slightest cause, he took a dislike to him. To illustrate the ferocity of the man, and his readiness to provoke a quarrel, the following story is told of him:

A gambler by the name of Jim Burdette was badly whipped by the proprietor of a variety show, Mark Wilson, who, after the fight, told Burdette that he had enough of men like him, who only came to his theater to raise trouble and interfere with his business, and that if either he or any of his gang ever again attempted to disturb his audiences that they would have him (Wilson) to deal with. The next day Ben Thompson, seated in a barber shop, heard about the row and said to a negro standing by: "Mack, d—n your nigger soul, you go down to that place this evening and when the house is full and everybody is seated, you just raise hell and we'll see what that —— is made of." The program was carried out. The negro arose in the midst of the audience and delivered himself of a few blood-curdling yells. Instantly the proprietor came out of the place, but caught sight of Thompson, who had drawn a pair of guns and stood ready to kill Wilson. The latter was too quick for him, and quickly disappeared behind the scenery, after his shotgun. There was too much excitement that night, and the matter passed off without a killing. A few nights thereafter, Thompson procured some lamp-black, which he gave the gambler Burdette, with instructions to go to the theater, watch his chance, and dash the stuff in Wilson's face. This was done and when the ill-fated proprietor, who immediately went for his shotgun, came out with that weapon, Thompson fell to the ground, and the contents of the gun, badly fired at the hands of Wilson, his face full of lamp-black, passed over Thompson's head. Thompson then arose and filled Wilson full of holes, killing him instantly. The bartender, seeing his employer's life in danger, fired at Thompson wildly, and as Thompson turned on him he dodged behind the bar to receive his death wound through the counter and in his back. Thompson at the court of last resort managed to have a lot of testimony brought to bear, and, with a half dozen gamblers to swear to anything he needed, he was admitted to bail and later freed.

He is said to have killed these two men for no reason in the world except to show that he could "run" a place where others had failed. A variation of the story is that a saloon keeper fired at Thompson as he was walking down the street in Austin, and missing him, sprang back behind the bar, Thompson shooting him through the head, through the bar front. Another man's life now meant little to him. He desired to be king, to be "chief," just as the leaders of the desperadoes in the mining regions of California and Montana sought to be "chief." It meant recognition of their courage, their skill, their willingness to take human life easily and carelessly and quickly, a singular ambition which has been so evidenced in no other part of the world than the American West. It is certain that the worst bad men all over Texas were afraid of Ben Thompson. He was "chief."

Ben Thompson left the staid paths of life in civilized communities. He did not rob, and he did not commit theft or burglary or any highway crimes; yet toiling and spinning were not for him. He was, for the most part, a gambler, and after a while he ceased even to follow that calling as a means of livelihood. Forgetting the etiquette of his chosen profession, he insisted on winning no manner how and no matter what the game. He would go into a gambling resort in some town, and sit in at a game. If he won, very well. If he lost, he would become enraged, and usually ended by reaching out and raking in the money on the table, no matter what the decision of the cards. He bought drinks for the crowd with the money he thus took, and scattered it right and left, so that his acts found a certain sanction among those who had not been despoiled.

To know what nerve it required to perform these acts of audacity, one must know something of the frontier life, which at no corner of the world was wilder and touchier than in the very part of the country where Thompson held forth. There were hundreds of men quick with the gun all about him, men of nerve, but he did not hesitate to take all manner of chances in that sort of population. The madness of the bad man was upon him. He must have known what alone could be his fate at last, but he went on, defying and courting his own destruction, as the finished desperado always does, under the strange creed of self-reliance which he established as his code of life. Thus, at a banquet of stockmen in Austin, and while the dinner was in progress, Thompson, alone, stampeded every man of them, and at that time nearly all stockmen were game. The fear of Thompson's pistol was such that no one would stand for a fight with him. Once Thompson went to the worst place in Texas, the town of Luling, where Rowdy Joe was running the toughest dance house in America. He ran all the bad men out of the place, confiscated what cash he needed from the gaming tables and raised trouble generally. He showed that he was "chief."

In the early eighties, in the quiet, sleepy, bloody old town of San Antonio, there was a dance hall, gambling resort and vaudeville theater, in which the main proprietor was one Jack Harris, commonly known as Pegleg Harris. Thompson frequently patronized this place on his visits to San Antonio, and received treatment which left him with a grudge against Harris, whom he resolved to kill. He followed his man into the bar-room one day and killed Harris as he stood in the semi-darkness. It was only another case of "self-defense" for Thompson, who was well used to being cleared of criminal charges or left unaccused altogether; and no doubt Harris would have killed him if he could.

After killing Harris, Thompson declared that he proposed to kill Harris' partners, Foster and Simms. He had an especial grudge against Billy Simms, then a young man not yet nineteen years of age, because, so it is stated, he fancied that Simms supplanted him in the affections of a woman in Austin; and he carried also his grudge against the gambling house, where Simms now was the manager. Every time Thompson got drunk, he declared his intention of killing Billy Simms, and as the latter was young and inexperienced, he trembled in his boots at this talk which seemed surely to spell his doom. Simms, to escape Thompson's wrath, removed to Chicago, and remained there for a time, but before long was summoned home to Austin, where his mother was very ill. Thompson knew of his presence in Austin, but with magnanimity declined to kill Simms while he was visiting his sick mother. "Wait till he goes over to Santone," he said, "then I'll step over and kill the little ——." Simms, presently called to San Antonio to settle some debt of Jack Harris' estate, of which as friend and partner of the widow he had been appointed administrator, went to the latter city with a heavy heart, supposing that he would never leave it alive. He was told there that Thompson had been threatening him many times; and Simms received many telegrams to that effect. Some say that Thompson himself telegraphed Simms that he was coming down that day to kill him. Certainly a friend of Simms on the same day wired him warning: "Party who wants to destroy you on train this day bound for San Antonio."

Friends of Thompson deny that he made such threats, and insist that he went to San Antonio on a wholly peaceful errand. In any case, this guarded but perfectly plain message set Simms half distracted. He went to the city marshal and showed his telegram, asking the marshal for protection, but the latter told him nothing could be done until Thompson had committed some "overt act." The sheriff and all the other officers said the same thing, not caring to meet Thompson if they could avoid it. Simms later in telling his story would sob at the memory of his feeling of helplessness at that time. The law gave him no protection. He was obliged to take matters in his own hands. He went to a judge of the court, and asked him what he should do. The judge pondered for a time, and said: "Under the circumstances, I should advise a shotgun."

Simms went to one of the faro dealers of the house, a man who was known as bad, and who never sat down to deal faro without a brace of big revolvers on the table; but this dealer advised him to go and "make friends with Thompson." He went to Foster, Harris' old partner, and laid the matter before him. Foster said, slowly, "Well, Billy, when he comes we'll do the best we can." Simms thought that he too was weakening.

There was a big policeman, a Mexican by name of Coy, who was considered a brave man and a fighter, and Simms now went to him and asked for aid, saying that he expected trouble that night, and wanted Coy to do his duty. Coy did not become enthusiastic, though as a matter of fact neither he nor Foster made any attempt to leave the place. Simms turned away, feeling that his end was near. In desperation he got a shotgun, and for a time stationed himself near the top of the stair up which Thompson would probably come when entering the place. The theater was up one flight of stairs, and at the right was the customary bar, from which "ladies" in short skirts served drinks to the crowd during the variety performance, which was one of the attractions of the place.



It was nervous work, waiting for the killer to come, and Simms could not stand it. He walked down the stairway, and took a turn around the block before he again ascended the stairs to the hall. Meantime, Ben Thompson, accompanied by another character, King Fisher, a man with several notches on his gun, had ascended the stairs, and had taken a seat on the right hand side and beyond the bar, in the row nearest the door. When Simms stepped to the foot of the stairs on his return, he met the barkeeper, who was livid with terror. He pointed trembling up the stair and whispered, "He's there!" Ben Thompson and King Fisher had as yet made no sort of demonstration. It is said that King Fisher had decoyed Thompson into the theater, knowing that a trap was laid to kill him. It is also declared that Thompson went in merely for amusement. A friend of the author, a New Mexican sheriff who happened to be in San Antonio, saw and talked with both men that afternoon. They were both quiet and sober then.

Simms' heart was in his mouth, but he made up his mind to die game, if he had to die. Slowly he walked up the stairway. Such was Thompson's vigilance, that he quickly arose and advanced toward Simms, who stood at the top of the stairs petrified and unable to move a muscle. Before Simms could think, his partner, Foster, appeared on the scene, and as he stood up, Thompson saw him and walked toward him and said: "Hello, Foster, how are you?" Slowly and deliberately Foster spoke: "Ben, this world is not big enough for us both. You killed poor Jack Harris like a dog, and you didn't as much as give him a chance for his life. You and I can never be friends any more." Quick as a flash and with a face like a demon, Thompson drew his pistol and jammed it into Foster's mouth, cruelly tearing his lips and sending him reeling backward. While this was going on, Simms had retreated to the next step, and there drew his pistol, not having his shotgun in hand then. He stepped forward as he saw Foster reel from the blow Thompson gave him, and with sudden courage opened fire. His first shot must have taken effect, and perhaps it decided the conflict. Thompson's gun did not get into action. Simms kept on firing. Thompson reeled back against King Fisher, and the two were unable to fire. Meantime the big Mexican, Coy, showed up from somewhere, just as Foster had. Both Foster and Coy rushed in front of the line of fire of Simms' pistol; and then without doubt, Simms killed his own friend and preserver. Foster got his death wound in such position that Simms admitted he must have shot him. None the less Foster ran into Thompson as the latter reeled backwards upon Fisher, and, with the fury of a tiger, shoved his own pistol barrel into Thompson's mouth in turn, and fired twice, completing the work Simms had begun. The giant Coy hurled his bulk into the struggling mass now crowded into the corner of the room, and some say he held Ben Thompson's arms, though in the melee it was hard to tell what happened. He called out to Simms, "Don't mind me," meaning that Simms should keep on firing. "Kill the —— of ——!" he cried. Coy no doubt was a factor in saving Simms' life, for one or the other of these two worst men in the Southwest would have got a man before he fell, had he been able to get his hands free in the struggling. Coy was shot in the leg, possibly by Simms, but did not drop. Simms took care of Coy to the end of his life, Coy dying but recently.

One of the men engaged in this desperate fight says that Coy did not hold Thompson, and that at first no one was shot to the floor. Thompson was staggered by Simms' first shot, which prevented a quick return of fire. It was Foster who killed Thompson and very likely King Fisher, the latter being hemmed in in the corner with Thompson in front of him. Coy rushed into the two and handled them so roughly that they never got their guns into action so far as known.

Leaving the fallen men at the rear of the theater, Simms now went down stairs, carrying Foster's pistol, with two chambers empty (the shots that killed Thompson) and his own gun. He saw Thompson's brother Bill coming at him. He raised the gun to kill him, when Phil Shardein, then city marshal, jumped on Thompson and shielded him with his body, calling out, "Don't shoot, Billy, I've got him." This saved Bill Thompson's life. Then several shots were heard upstairs, and upon investigation, it was found that Coy had emptied his pistol into the dead body of Thompson. He also shot Fisher, to "make sure the —— were dead."

Thus they died at last, two of the most notorious men of Texas, both with their boots on. There were no tears. Many told what they would or could have done had Ben Thompson threatened them. This closing act in the career of Ben Thompson came in the late spring of 1882. He was then about forty-three years of age.

King Fisher, who met death at the same time with Thompson, was a good disciple of desperadoism. He was a dark-haired, slender young man from Goliad county—which county seems to have produced far more than its share of bad men. He had killed six men and stolen a great many horses in his time. Had he lived longer, he would have killed more. He was not of the caliber sufficient to undertake the running of a large city, but there was much relief felt over his death. He had many friends, of course, and some of these deny that he had any intention of making trouble when he went into the theater with Ben Thompson, just as friends of the latter accuse King Fisher of treachery. There are never lacking men who regard dead desperadoes as martyrs; and indeed it is usually the case that there are mixed circumstances and frequently extenuating ones, to be found in the history of any killer's life.

Another Goliad county man well known around San Antonio was Alfred Y. Allee, who was a rancher a short distance back from the railway. Allee was decent when sober, but when drunk was very dangerous, and was recognized as bad and well worth watching. Liquor seemed to transform him and to make him a bloodthirsty fiend. He had killed several men, one or two under no provocation whatever and when they were defenseless, including a porter on a railway train. It was his habit to come to town and get drunk, then to invite every one to drink with him and take offense at any refusal. He liked to be "chief" of the drinking place which he honored with his presence. He once ordered a peaceful citizen of San Antonio, a friend of the writer, up to drink with him, and when the latter declined came near shooting him. The man took his drink, then slipped away and got his shotgun. Perhaps his second thought was wiser. "What's the use?" he argued with himself. "Somebody'll kill Allee before long anyhow."

This came quite true, for within the week Allee had run his course. He dropped down to Laredo and began to "hurrah" that town also. The town marshal, Joe Bartelow, was a Mexican, but something of a killer himself, and he resolved to end the Allee disturbances, once for all. It is said that Allee was not armed when at length they met in a saloon, and it is said that Bartelow offered his hand in greeting. At once Bartelow threw his arm around Allee's neck, and with his free hand cut him to death with a knife. Whether justifiable or not, that was the fashion of the homicide.

Any man who has killed more than twenty men is in most countries considered fit to qualify as bad. This test would include the little human tiger, Tumlinson, of South Texas, who was part of the time an officer of the law and part of the time an independent killer in Texas. He had many more than twenty men to his credit, it was said, and his Mexican wife, smilingly, always said that "Tumlinson never counted Mexicans." He was a genius with the revolver, and as good a rifle shot as would often be found. It made no difference to him whether or not a man was running, for part of his pistol practice was in shooting at a bottle swinging in the wind from the bough of a tree. Legend goes that Tumlinson killed his wife and then shot himself dead, taking many secrets with him. He was bad.

Sam Bass was a noted outlaw and killer in West Texas, accustomed to ride into town and to take charge of things when he pleased. He had many thefts and robberies to his credit, and not a few murders. His finish was one not infrequent in that country. The citizens got wind of his coming one day, just before he rode into Round Rock for a little raid. The city marshal and several others opened fire on Bass and his party, and killed them to a man.

It was of such stuff as this that most of the bad men and indeed many of the peace officers were composed, along a wide frontier in the early troublous days following the civil war, when all the border was a seething mass of armed men for whom the law had as yet gained no meaning. To tell the story of more individuals would be to depart from the purpose of this work. Were these men wrong, and were they wholly and unreservedly bad? Ignorance and bigotry will be the first to give the answer, the first to apply to them the standards of these later days.



Chapter XX

Modern Bad Men—Murder and Robbery as a Profession—The School of Guerrilla Warfare—Butcher Quantrell; the James Brothers; the Younger Brothers.

Outlawry of the early border, in days before any pretense at establishment of a system of law and government, and before the holding of property had assumed any very stable form, may have retained a certain glamour of romance. The loose gold of the mountains, the loose cattle of the plains, before society had fallen into any strict way of living, and while plenty seemed to exist for any and all, made a temptation easily accepted and easily excused. The ruffians of those early days had a largeness in their methods which gives some of them at least a color of interest. If any excuse may be offered for lawlessness, any palliation for acts committed without countenance of the law, that excuse and palliation may be pleaded for these men if for any. But for the man who is bad and mean as well, who kills for gain, and who adds cruelty and cunning to his acts instead of boldness and courage, little can be said. Such characters afford us horror, but it is horror unmingled with any manner of admiration.

Yet, if we reconcile ourselves to tarry a moment with the cheap and gruesome, the brutal and ignorant side of mere crime, we shall be obliged to take into consideration some of the bloodiest characters ever known in our history; who operated well within the day of established law; who made a trade of robbery, and whose capital consisted of disregard for the life and property of others. That men like this should live for years at the very door of large cities, in an old settled country, and known familiarly in their actual character to thousands of good citizens, is a strange commentary on the American character; yet such are the facts.

It has been shown that a widely extended war always has the effect of cheapening human life in and out of the ranks of the fighting armies. The early wars of England, in the days of the longbow and buckler, brought on her palmiest days of cutpurses and cutthroats. The days following our own civil war were fearful ones for the entire country from Montana to Texas; and nowhere more so than along the dividing line between North and South, where feeling far bitterer than soldierly antagonism marked a large population on both sides of that contest. We may further restrict the field by saying that nowhere on any border was animosity so fierce as in western Missouri and eastern Kansas, where jayhawker and border ruffian waged a guerrilla war for years before the nation was arrayed against itself in ordered ranks. If mere blood be matter of our record here, assuredly, is a field of interest. The deeds of Lane and Brown, of Quantrell and Hamilton, are not surpassed in terror in the history of any land. Osceola, Marais du Cygne, Lawrence—these names warrant a shudder even to-day.

This locality—say that part of Kansas and Missouri near the towns of Independence and Westport, and more especially the counties of Jackson and Clay in the latter state—was always turbulent, and had reason to be. Here was the halting place of the westbound civilization, at the edge of the plains, at the line long dividing the whites from the Indians. Here settled, like the gravel along the cleats of a sluice, the daring men who had pushed west from Kentucky, Tennessee, lower Ohio, eastern Missouri—the Boones, Carsons, Crocketts, and Kentons of their day. Here came the Mormons to found their towns, and later to meet the armed resistance which drove them across the plains. Here, at these very towns, was the outfitting place and departing point of the caravans of the early Santa Fe trade; here the Oregon Trail left for the far Northwest; and here the Forty-niners paused a moment in their mad rush to the golden coast of the Pacific. Here, too, adding the bitterness of fanaticism to the courage of the frontier, came the bold men of the North who insisted that Kansas should be free for the expansion of the northern population and institutions.

This corner of Missouri-Kansas was a focus of recklessness and daring for more than a whole generation. The children born there had an inheritance of indifference to death such as has been surpassed nowhere in our frontier unless that were in the bloody Southwest. The men of this country, at the outbreak of the civil war, made as high an average in desperate fighting as any that ever lived. Too restless to fight under the ensign of any but their own ilk, they set up a banner of their own. The black flags of Quantrell and of Lane, of border ruffian and jayhawker, were guidons under which quarter was unknown, and mercy a forgotten thing. Warfare became murder, and murder became assassination. Ambushing, surprise, pillage and arson went with murder; and women and children were killed as well as fighting men. Is it wonder that in such a school there grew up those figures which a certain class of writers have been wont to call bandit kings; the bank robbers and train robbers of modern days, the James and Younger type of bad men?

The most notorious of these border fighters was the bloody leader, Charles William Quantrell, leader at the sacking of Lawrence, and as dangerous a partisan leader as ever threw leg into saddle. He was born in Hagerstown, Maryland, July 20, 1836, and as a boy lived for a time in the Ohio city of Cleveland. At twenty years of age, he joined his brother for a trip to California, via the great plains. This was in 1856, and Kansas was full of Free Soilers, whose political principles were not always untempered by a large-minded willingness to rob. A party of these men surprised the Quantrell party on the Cottonwood river, and killed the older brother. Charles William Quantrell swore an undying revenge; and he kept his oath.

It is not necessary to mention in detail the deeds of this border leader. They might have had commendation for their daring had it not been for their brutality and treachery. Quantrell had a band of sworn men, held under solemn oath to stand by each other and to keep their secrets. These men were well armed and well mounted, were all fearless and all good shots, the revolver being their especial arm, as it was of Mosby's men in the civil war. The tactics of this force comprised surprise, ambush, and a determined rush, in turn; and time and again they defeated Federal forces many times their number, being thoroughly well acquainted with the country, and scrupling at nothing in the way of treachery, just as they considered little the odds against which they fought. Their victims were sometimes paroled, but not often, and a massacre usually followed a defeat—almost invariably so if the number of prisoners was small.

Cold-blooded and unhesitating murder was part of their everyday life. Thus Jesse James, on the march to the Lawrence massacre, had in charge three men, one of them an old man, whom they took along as guides from the little town of Aubrey, Kansas. They used these men until they found themselves within a few miles of Lawrence, and then, as is alleged, members of the band took them aside and killed them, the old man begging for his life and pleading that he never had done them any wrong. His murderers were no more than boys. This act may have been that of bad men, but not of the sort of bad men that leaves us any sort of respect, such as that which may be given Wild Bill, even Billy the Kid, or any of a dozen other big-minded desperadoes.

This assassination was but one of scores or hundreds. A neighbor suspected of Federal sympathies was visited in the night and shot or hanged, his property destroyed, his family killed. The climax of the Lawrence massacre was simply the working out of principles of blood and revenge. In that fight, or, more properly, that massacre, women and children went down as well as men. The James boys were Quantrell riders, Jesse a new recruit, and that day they maintained that they had killed sixty-five persons between them, and wounded twenty more! What was the total record of these two men alone in all this period of guerrilla fighting? It cannot be told. Probably they themselves could not remember. The four Younger boys had records almost or quite as bad.

There, indeed, was a border soaked in blood, a country torn with intestinal warfare. Quantrell was beaten now and then, meeting fighting men in blue or in jeans, as well as leading fighting men; and at times he was forced to disband his men, later to recruit again, and to go on with his marauding up and down the border. His career attracted the attention of leaders on both sides of the opposing armies, and at one time it was nearly planned that Confederates should join the Unionists and make common cause against these guerrillas, who had made the name of Missouri one of reproach and contempt. The matter finally adjusted itself by the death of Quantrell in a fight at Smiley, Kentucky, in January, 1865.

With a birth and training such as this, what could be expected for the surviving Quantrell men? They scattered over all the frontier, from Texas to Minnesota, and most of them lived in terror of their lives thereafter, with the name of Quantrell as a term of loathing attached to them where their earlier record was known. Many and many a border killing years later and far removed in locality arose from the implacable hatred descended from those days.

As for the James boys, the Younger boys, what could they do? The days of war were gone. There were no longer any armed banners arrayed one against the other. The soldiers who had fought bravely and openly on both sides had laid down their arms and fraternized. The Union grew, strong and indissoluble. Men settled down to farming, to artisanship, to merchandising, and their wounds were healed. Amnesty was extended to those who wished it and deserved it. These men could have found a living easy to them, for the farming lands still lay rich and ready for them. But they did not want this life of toil. They preferred the ways of robbery and blood in which they had begun. They cherished animosity now, not against the Federals, but against mankind. The social world was their field of harvest; and they reaped it, weapon in hand.

The James family originally came from Kentucky, where Frank was born, in Scott county, in 1846. The father, Robert James, was a Baptist minister of the Gospel. He removed to Clay county, Missouri, in 1849, and Jesse was born there in 1850. Reverend Robert James left for California in 1851 and never returned. The mother, a woman of great strength of character, later married a Doctor Samuels. She was much embittered by the persecution of her family, as she considered it. She herself lost an arm in an attack by detectives upon her home, in which a young son was killed. The family had many friends and confederates throughout the country; else the James boys must have found an end long before they were brought to justice.

From precisely the same surroundings came the Younger boys, Thomas Coleman, or "Cole," Younger, and his brothers, John, Bruce, James, and Robert. Their father was Henry W. Younger, who settled in Jackson county, Missouri, in 1825, and was known as a man of ability and worth. For eight years he was county judge, and was twice elected to the state legislature. He had fourteen children, of whom five certainly were bad. At one time he owned large bodies of land, and he was a prosperous merchant in Harrisonville for some time. Cole Younger was born January 15, 1844, John in 1846, Bruce in 1848, James in 1850, and Bob in 1853. As these boys grew old enough, they joined the Quantrell bands, and their careers were precisely the same as those of the James boys. The cause of their choice of sides was the same. Jennison, the Kansas jayhawker leader, in one of his raids into Missouri, burned the houses of Younger and confiscated the horses in his livery stables. After that the boys of the family swore revenge.

At the close of the war, the Younger and James boys worked together very often, and were leaders of a band which had a cave in Clay county and numberless farm houses where they could expect shelter in need. With them, part of the time, were George and Ollie Shepherd; other members of their band were Bud Singleton, Bob Moore, Clel Miller and his brother, Arthur McCoy; others who came and went from time to time were regularly connected with the bigger operations. It would be wearisome to recount the long list of crimes these men committed for ten or fifteen years after the war. They certainly brought notoriety to their country. They had the entire press of America reproaching the State of Missouri; they had the governors of that state and two or three others at their wits' end; they had the best forces of the large city detective agencies completely baffled. They killed two detectives—one of whom, however, killed John Younger before he died—and executed another in cold blood under circumstances of repellant brutality. They raided over Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, even as far east as West Virginia, as far north as Minnesota, as far south as Texas and even old Mexico. They looted dozens of banks, and held up as many railway passenger trains and as many stage coaches and travelers as they liked. The James boys alone are known to have taken in their robberies $275,000, and, including the unlawful gains of their colleagues, the Youngers, no doubt they could have accounted for over half a million dollars. They laughed at the law, defied the state and county governments, and rode as they liked, here, there, and everywhere, until the name of law in the West was a mockery. If magnitude in crime be claim to distinction, they might ask the title, for surely their exploits were unrivaled, and perhaps cannot again be equaled. And they did all of these unbelievable things in the heart of the Mississippi valley, in a country thickly settled, in the face of a long reputation for criminal deeds, and in a country fully warned against them! Surely, it seems sometimes that American law is weak.

It was much the same story in all the long list of robberies of small country banks. A member of the gang would locate the bank and get an idea of the interior arrangements. Two or three of the gang would step in and ask to have a bill changed; then they would cover the cashier with revolvers and force him to open the safe. If he resisted, he was killed; sometimes killed no matter what he did, as was cashier Sheets in the Gallatin bank robbery. The guard outside kept the citizens terrified until the booty was secured; then flight on good horses followed. After that ensued the frantic and unorganized pursuit by citizens and officers, possibly another killing or two en route, and a return to their lurking place in Clay county, Missouri, where they never had any difficulty in proving all the alibis they needed. None of these men ever confessed to a full list of these robberies, and, even years later, they all denied complicity; but the facts are too well known to warrant any attention to their denials, founded upon a very natural reticence. Of course, their safety lay in the sympathy of a large number of neighbors of something the same kidney; and fear of retaliation supplied the only remaining motive needed to enforce secrecy.

Some of the most noted bank robberies in which the above mentioned men, or some of them, were known to have been engaged were as follows: The Clay County Savings Association, of Liberty, Missouri, February 14, 1866, in which a little boy by name of Wymore was shot to pieces because he obeyed the orders of the bank cashier and gave the alarm; the bank of Alexander Mitchell & Co., Lexington, Missouri, October 30, 1860; the McLain Bank, of Savannah, Missouri, March 2, 1867, in which Judge McLain was shot and nearly killed; the Hughes & Mason Bank, of Richmond, Missouri, May 23, 1867, and the later attack on the jail, in which Mayor Shaw, Sheriff J. B. Griffin, and his brave fifteen-year-old boy were all killed; the bank of Russellville, Kentucky, March 20, 1868, in which cashier Long was badly beaten; the Daviess County Savings Bank, of Gallatin, Missouri, December 7, 1869, in which cashier John Sheets was brutally killed; the bank of Obocock Brothers, Corydon, Iowa, June 3, 1871, in which forty thousand dollars was taken, although no one was killed; the Deposit Bank, of Columbia, Missouri, April 29, 1872, in which cashier R. A. C. Martin was killed; the Savings Association, of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri; the Bank of Huntington, West Virginia, September 1, 1875, in which one of the bandits, McDaniels, was killed; the Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, September 7, 1876, in which cashier J. L. Haywood was killed, A. E. Bunker wounded, and several of the bandits killed and captured as later described.

These same men or some of them also robbed a stage coach now and then; near Hot Springs, Arkansas, for example, January 15, 1874, where they picked up four thousand dollars, and included ex-Governor Burbank, of Dakota, among their victims, taking from him alone fifteen hundred dollars; the San Antonio-Austin coach, in Texas, May 12, 1875, in which John Breckenridge, president of the First National Bank of San Antonio, was relieved of one thousand dollars; and the Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, stage, September 3, 1880, where they took nearly two thousand dollars in cash and jewelry from passengers of distinction.

The most daring of their work, however, and that which brought them into contact with the United States government for tampering with the mails, was their repeated robbery of railway mail trains, which became a matter of simplicity and certainty in their hands. To flag a train or to stop it with an obstruction; or to get aboard and mingle with the train crew, then to halt the train, kill any one who opposed them, and force the opening of the express agent's safe, became a matter of routine with them in time, and the amount of cash they thus obtained was staggering in the total. The most noted train robberies in which members of the James-Younger bands were engaged were the Rock Island train robbery near Council Bluffs, Iowa, July 21, 1873, in which engineer Rafferty was killed in the wreck, and but small booty secured; the Gad's Hill, Missouri, robbery of the Iron Mountain train, January 28, 1874, in which about five thousand dollars was secured from the express agent, mail bags and passengers; the Kansas-Pacific train robbery near Muncie, Kansas, December 12, 1874, in which they secured more than fifty-five thousand dollars in cash and gold dust, with much jewelry; the Missouri-Pacific train robbery at Rocky Cut, July 7, 1876, where they held the train for an hour and a quarter and secured about fifteen thousand dollars in all; the robbery of the Chicago & Alton train near Glendale, Missouri, October 7, 1879, in which the James boys' gang secured between thirty-five and fifty thousand dollars in currency; the robbery of the Rock Island train near Winston, Missouri, July 15, 1881, by the James boys' gang, in which conductor Westfall was killed, messenger Murray badly beaten, and a passenger named MacMillan killed, little booty being obtained; the Blue Cut robbery of the Alton train, September 7, 1881, in which the James boys and eight others searched every passenger and took away a two-bushel sack full of cash, watches, and jewelry, beating the express messenger badly because they got so little from the safe. This last robbery caused the resolution of Governor Crittenden, of Missouri, to take the bandits dead or alive, a reward of thirty thousand dollars being arranged by different railways and express companies, a price of ten thousand dollars each being put on the heads of Frank and Jesse James.

Outside of this long list of the bandit gang's deeds of outlawry, they were continually in smaller undertakings of a similar nature. Once they took away ten thousand dollars in cash at the box office of the Kansas City Fair, this happening September 26, 1872, in a crowded city, with all the modern machinery of the law to guard its citizens. Many acts at widely separated parts of the country were accredited to the Younger or the James boys, and although they cannot have been guilty of all of them, and, although many of the adventures accredited to them in Texas, Mexico, California, the Indian Nations, etc., bear earmarks of apocryphal origin, there is no doubt that for twenty years after the close of the civil war they made a living in this way, their gang being made up of perhaps a score of different men in all, and usually consisting of about six to ten men, according to the size of the undertaking on hand.

Meantime, all these years, the list of homicides for each of them was growing. Jesse James killed three men out of six who attacked his house one night, and not long after Frank and he are alleged to have killed six men in a gambling fight in California. John and Jim Younger killed the Pinkerton detectives Lull and Daniels, John being himself killed at that time by Daniels. A little later, Frank and Jesse James and Clel Miller killed detective Wicher, of the same agency, torturing him for some time before his death in the attempt to make him divulge the Pinkerton plans. The James boys killed Daniel Askew in revenge; and Jesse James and Jim Anderson killed Ike Flannery for motives of robbery. This last set the gang into hostile camps, for Flannery was a nephew of George Shepherd. Shepherd later killed Anderson in Texas for his share in that act; he also shot Jesse James and for a long time supposed he had killed him.

The full record of these outlaws will never be known. Their career came to an end soon after the heavy rewards were put upon their heads, and it came in the usual way, through treachery. Allured by the prospect of gaining ten thousand dollars, two cousins of Jesse James, Bob and Charlie Ford, pretending to join his gang for another robbery, became members of Jesse James' household while he was living incognito as Thomas Howard. On the morning of April 3, 1882, Bob Ford, a mere boy, not yet twenty years of age, stepped behind Jesse James as he was standing on a chair dusting off a picture frame, and, firing at close range, shot him through the head and killed him. Bob Ford never got much respect for his act, and his money was soon gone. He himself was killed in February, 1892, at Creede, Colorado, by a man named Kelly.



Jesse James was about five feet ten inches in height, and weighed about one hundred and sixty-five pounds. His hair and eyes were brown. He had, during his life, been shot twice through the lungs, once through the leg, and had lost a finger of the left hand from a bullet wound. Frank James was slighter than his brother, with light hair and blue eyes, and a ragged, reddish mustache. Frank surrendered to Governor Crittenden himself at Jefferson City, in October, 1882, taking off his revolvers and saying that no man had touched them but himself since 1861. He was sentenced to the penitentiary for life, but later pardoned, as he was thought to be dying of consumption. At this writing, he is still alive, somewhat old and bent now, but leading a quiet and steady life, and showing no disposition to return to his old ways. He is sometimes seen around the race tracks, where he does but little talking. Frank James has had many apologists, and his life should be considered in connection with the environments in which he grew up. He killed many men, but he was never as cold and cruel as Jesse, and of the two he was the braver man, men say who knew them both. He never was known to back down under any circumstances.

The fate of the Younger boys was much mingled with that of the James boys, but the end of the careers of the former came in more dramatic fashion. The wonder is that both parties should have clung together so long, for it is certain that Cole Younger once intended to kill Jesse James, and one night he came near killing George Shepherd through malicious statements Jesse James had made to him about the latter. Shepherd met Cole at the house of a friend named Hudspeth, in Jackson county, and their host put them in the same bed that night for want of better accommodations. "After we lay down," said Shepherd later, in describing this, "I saw Cole reach up under his pillow and draw out a pistol, which he put beside him under the cover. Not to be taken unawares, I at once grasped my own pistol and shoved it down under the covers beside me. Were it to save my life, I couldn't tell what reason Cole had for becoming my enemy. We talked very little, but just lay there watching each other. He was behind and I on the front side of the bed, and during the entire night we looked into each other's eyes and never moved. It was the most wretched night I ever passed in my life." So much may at times be the price of being "bad." By good fortune, they did not kill each other, and the next day Cole told Shepherd that he had expected him to shoot on sight, as Jesse James had said he would. Explanations then followed. It nearly came to a collision between Cole Younger and Jesse James later, for Cole challenged him to fight, and it was only with difficulty that their friends accommodated the matter.

The history of the Younger boys is tragic all the way through. Their father was assassinated, their mother was forced to set fire to her own house and destroy it under penalty of death; three sisters were arrested and confined in a barracks at Kansas City, which during a high wind fell in, killed two of the girls and crippled the other. John Younger was a murderer at the age of fourteen, and how many times Cole Younger was a murderer, with or without his wish, will never be known. He was shot three times in one fight in guerrilla days, and probably few bad men ever carried off more lead than he.

The story of the Northfield bank robbery in Minnesota, which ended so disastrously to the bandits who undertook it, is interesting as showing what brute courage, and, indeed, what fidelity and fortitude may at times be shown by dangerous specimens of bad men. The purpose of the robbery was criminal, its carrying out was attended with murder, and the revenge for it came sharp and swift. In all the annals of desperadoes, there is not a battle more striking than this which occurred in a sleepy and contented little village in the quiet northern farming country, where no one for a moment dreamed that the bandits of the rumored bloody lands along the Missouri would ever trouble themselves to come. The events immediately connected with this tragedy, the result of which was the ending of the Younger gang, were as hereinafter described.

Bill Chadwell, alias Styles, a member of the James boys gang, had formerly lived in Minnesota. He drew a pleasing picture of the wealth of that country, and the ease with which it could be obtained by bandit methods. Cole Younger was opposed to going so far from home, but was overruled. He finally joined the others—Frank and Jesse James, Clel Miller, Jim and Bob Younger, Charlie Pitts and Chadwell. They went to Minnesota by rail, and, after looking over the country, purchased good horses, and prepared to raid the little town of Northfield, in Rice county. They carried their enterprise into effect on September 7, 1876, using methods with which earlier experience had made them familiar. They rode into the middle of the town and opened fire, ordering every one off the streets. Jesse James, Charlie Pitts and Bob Younger entered the bank, where they found cashier J. L. Haywood, with two clerks, Frank Wilcox and A. E. Bunker. Bunker started to run, and Bob Younger shot him through the shoulder. They ordered Haywood to open the safe, but he bluntly refused, even though they slightly cut him in the throat to enforce obedience. Firing now began from the citizens on the street, and the bandits in the bank hurried in their work, contenting themselves with such loose cash as they found in the drawers and on the counter. As they started to leave the bank, Haywood made a motion toward a drawer as if to find a weapon. Jesse James turned and shot him through the head, killing him instantly. These three of the bandits then sprang out into the street. They were met by the fire of Doctor Wheeler and several other citizens, Hide, Stacey, Manning and Bates. Doctor Wheeler was across the street in an upstairs room, and as Bill Chadwell undertook to mount his horse, Wheeler fired and shot him dead. Manning fired at Clel Miller, who had mounted, and shot him from his horse. Cole Younger was by this time ready to retreat, but he rode up to Miller, and removed from his body his belt and pistols. Manning fired again, and killed the horse behind which Bob Younger was hiding, and an instant later a shot from Wheeler struck Bob in the right elbow. Although this arm was disabled Bob shifted his pistol to his left hand and fired at Bates, cutting a furrow through his cheek, but not killing him. About this time a Norwegian by the name of Gustavson appeared on the street, and not halting at the order to do so, he was shot through the head by one of the bandits, receiving a wound from which he died a few days later. The gang then began to scatter and retreat. Jim Younger was on foot and was wounded. Cole rode back up the street, and took the wounded man on his horse behind him. The entire party then rode out of town to the west, not one of them escaping without severe wounds.

As soon as the bandits had departed, news was sent by telegraph, notifying the surrounding country of the robbery. Sheriffs, policemen and detectives rallied in such numbers that the robbers were hard put to it to escape alive. A state reward of $1,000 for each was published, and all lower Minnesota organized itself into a determined man hunt. The gang undertook to get over the Iowa line, and they managed to keep away from their pursuers until the morning of the 13th, a week after the robbery. The six survivors were surrounded on that day in a strip of timber. Frank and Jesse James broke through, riding the same horse. They were fired upon, a bullet striking Frank James in the right knee, and passing through into Jesse's right thigh. None the less, the two got away, stole a horse apiece that night, and passed on to the Southwest. They rode bareback, and now and again enforced a horse trade with a farmer or livery-stable man. They got down near Sioux Falls, and there met Doctor Mosher, whom they compelled to dress their wounds, and to furnish them horses and clothing. Later on their horses gave out, and they hired a wagon and kept on. Their escape seems incomprehensible, yet it is the case that they got quite clear, finally reaching Missouri.

Of the other bandits there were left Cole, Jim and Bob Younger and Charlie Pitts; and after these a large number of citizens followed close. In spite of the determined pursuit, they kept out of reach for another week. On the morning of September 21st, two weeks after the robbery, they were located in the woods along the Watonwan river, not far from Madelia. Sheriff Glispin hurriedly got together a posse and surrounded them in a patch of timber not over five acres in extent. In a short time more than one hundred and fifty men were about this cover; but although they kept up firing, they could not drive out the concealed bandits. Sheriff Glispin called for volunteers; and with Colonel Vaught, Ben Rice, George Bradford, James Severson, Charles Pomeroy and Captain Murphy moved into the cover. As they advanced, Charlie Pitts sprang out from the brush, and fired point blank at Glispin. At the same instant the latter also fired and shot Pitts, who ran a short distance and fell dead. Then Cole, Bob and Jim Younger stood up and opened fire as best they could, all of the men of the storming party returning their fire. Murphy was struck in the body by a bullet, and his life was saved by his pipe, which he carried in his vest pocket. Another member of the posse had his watch blown to pieces by a bullet. The Younger boys gave back a little, but this brought them within sight of those surrounding the thicket, so they retreated again close to the line of the volunteers. Cole and Jim Younger were now badly shot. Bob, with his broken right arm, stood his ground, the only one able to continue the fight, and kept his revolver going with his left hand. The others handed him their revolvers after his own was empty. The firing from the posse still continued, and at last Bob called out to them to stop, as his brothers were all shot to pieces. He threw down his pistol, and walked forward to the sheriff, to whom he surrendered. Bob always spoke with respect of Sheriff Glispin both as a fighter and as a peace officer. One of the farmers drew up his gun to kill Bob after he had surrendered, but Glispin told him to drop his gun or he would kill him.

It is doubtful if any set of men ever showed more determination and more ability to stand punishment than these misled outlaws. Bob Younger was hurt less than any of the others. His arm had been broken at Northfield two weeks before, but he was wounded but once, slightly in the body, out of all the shots fired at him while in the thicket. Cole Younger had a rifle bullet in the right cheek, which paralyzed his right eye. He had received a .45 revolver bullet through the body, and also had been shot through the thigh at Northfield. He received eleven different wounds in the fight, or thirteen bad wounds in all, enough to have killed a half dozen men. Jim's case seemed even worse, for he had in his body eight buckshot and a rifle bullet. He had been shot through the shoulder at Northfield, and nearly half his lower jaw had been carried away by a heavy bullet, a wound which caused him intense suffering. Bob was the only one able to stand on his feet.

Of the two men killed in town, Clel Miller and Bill Chadwell, the former had a long record in bank robberies; the latter, guide in the ill-fated expedition to Minnesota, was a horse thief of considerable note at one time in lower Minnesota.

The prisoners were placed in jail at Faribault, the county seat of Rice county, and in a short time the Grand Jury returned true bills against them, charging them with murder and robbery. Court convened November 7th, Judge Lord being on the bench. All of the prisoners pleaded guilty, and the order of the court was that each should be confined in the state penitentiary for the period of his natural life.

The later fate of the Younger boys may be read in the succinct records of the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater:

"Thos. Coleman Younger, sentenced Nov. 20, 1876, from Rice county under a life sentence for the crime of Murder in the first degree. Paroled July 14, 1901. Pardoned Feb. 4, 1903, on condition that he leave the State of Minnesota, and that he never exhibit himself in public in any way.

"James Younger, sentenced Nov. 20, 1876, from Rice county under a life sentence for the crime of Murder in the first degree. Paroled July 13, 1901. Shot himself with a revolver in the city of St. Paul, Minn., and died at once from the wound inflicted on Oct. 19, 1902.

"Robt. Younger, sentenced Nov. 20, 1876, from Rice county under a life sentence for the crime of Murder in the first degree. He died Sept. 16, 1889, of phthisis."

The James boys almost miraculously escaped, traveled clear across the State of Iowa and got back to their old haunts. They did not stop, but kept on going until they got to Mexico, where they remained for some time. They did not take their warning, however, and some of their most desperate train robberies were committed long after the Younger boys were in the penitentiary.

In view of the bloody careers of all these men, it is to be said that the law has been singularly lenient with them. Yet the Northfield incident was conclusive, and was the worst setback ever received by any gang of bad men; unless, perhaps, that was the defeat of the Dalton gang at Coffeyville, Kansas, some years later, the story of which is given in the following chapter.



Chapter XXI

Bad Men of the Indian Nations—A Hotbed of Desperadoes—Reasons for Bad Men in the Indian Nations—The Dalton Boys—The Most Desperate Street Fight of the West.

What is true for Texas, in the record of desperadoism, is equally applicable to the country adjoining Texas upon the north, long known under the general title of the Indian Nations; although it is now rapidly being divided and allotted under the increasing demands of an ever-advancing civilization.

The great breeding ground of outlaws has ever been along the line of demarcation between the savage and the civilized. Here in the Indian country, as though in a hotbed especially contrived, the desperado has flourished for generations. The Indians themselves retained much their old savage standards after they had been placed in this supposedly perpetual haven of refuge by the government. They have been followed, ever since the first movement of the tribes into these reservations, by numbers of unscrupulous whites such as hang on the outskirts of the settlements and rebel at the requirements of civilization. Many white men of certain type married among the Indians, and the half-breed is reputed as a product inheriting the bad traits of both races and the good ones of neither—a sweeping statement not always wholly true. Among these also was a large infusion of negro blood, emanating from the slaves brought in by the Cherokees, and added to later by negroes moving in and marrying among the tribes. These mixed bloods seem to have been little disposed toward the ways of law and order. Moreover, the system of law was here, of course, altogether different from that of the States. The freedom from restraint, the exemption from law, which always marked the border, here found their last abiding place. The Indians were not adherents to the white man's creed, save as to the worst features, and they kept their own creed of blood. No man will ever know how many murders have been committed in these fair and pleasant savannahs, among these rough hills or upon these rolling grassy plains from the time William Clark, the "Red Head Chief," began the government work of settling the tribes in these lands, then supposed to be far beyond the possible demands of the white population of America.

Life could be lived here with small exertion. The easy gifts of the soil and the chase, coupled with the easy gifts of the government, unsettled the minds of all from those habits of steady industry and thrift which go with the observance of the law. If one coveted his neighbor's possessions, the ready arbitrament of firearms told whose were the spoils. Human life has been cheap here for more than half a hundred years; and this condition has endured directly up to and into the days of white civilization. The writer remembers very well that in his hunting expeditions of twenty years ago it was always held dangerous to go into the Nations; and this was true whether parties went in across the Neutral Strip, or farther east among the Osages or the Creeks. The country below Coffeyville was wild and remote as we saw it then, although now it is settling up, is traversed by railroads, and is slowly passing into the hands of white men in severalty, as fast as the negroes release their lands, or as fast as the government allows the Indians to give individual titles. In those days it was a matter of small concern if a traveler never returned from a journey among the timber clad mountains, or the black jack thickets along the rivers; and many was the murder committed thereabouts that never came to light.

In and around the Indian Nations there have also always been refugees from the upper frontier or from Texas or Arkansas. The country was long the natural haven of the lawless, as it has long been the designated home of a wild population. In this region the creed has been much the same even after the wild ethics of the cow men yielded to the scarcely more lawful methods of the land boomer.

Each man in the older days had his own notion of personal conduct, as each had his own opinions about the sacredness of property. It was natural that train robbing and bank looting should become recognized industries when the railroads and towns came into this fertile region, so long left sacred to the chase. The gangs of such men as the Cook boys, the Wickcliffe boys, or the Dalton boys, were natural and logical products of an environment. That this should be the more likely may be seen from the fact that for a decade or more preceding the great rushes of the land grabbers, the exploits of the James and Younger boys in train and bank robbing had filled all the country with the belief that the law could be defied successfully through a long term of years. The Cook boys acted upon this basis, until at length marshals shot them both, killed one and sent the remnants of the other to the penitentiary.

Since it would be impossible to go into any detailed mention of the scores and hundreds of desperadoes who have at different times been produced by the Nations, it may be sufficient to give a few of the salient features of the careers of the band which, as well as any, may be called typical of the Indian Nations brand of desperadoism—the once notorious Dalton boys.

The Dalton family lived in lower Kansas, near Coffeyville, which was situated almost directly upon the border of the Nations. They engaged in farming, and indeed two of the family were respectable farmers near Coffeyville within the last three or four years. The mother of the family still lives near Oklahoma City, where she secured a good claim at the time of the opening of the Oklahoma lands to white settlement. The father, Lewis Dalton, was a Kentucky man and served in the Mexican war. He later moved to Jackson county, Missouri, near the home of the notorious James and Younger boys, and in 1851 married Adelaide Younger, they removing some years later from Missouri to Kansas. Thirteen children were born to them, nine sons and four daughters. Charles, Henry, Littleton and Coleman Dalton were respected and quiet citizens. All the boys had nerve, and many of them reached office as deputy marshals. Franklin Dalton was killed while serving as deputy United States marshal near Fort Smith, in 1887, his brother Bob being a member of the same posse at the time his fight was made with a band of horse thieves who resisted arrest. Grattan Dalton, after the death of his brother Franklin, was made a deputy United States marshal, after the curious but efficient Western fashion of setting dangerous men to work at catching dangerous men. He and his posse in 1888 went after a bad Indian, who, in the melee, shot Grattan in the arm and escaped. Grattan later served as United States deputy marshal in Muskogee district, where the courts certainly needed men of stern courage as executives, for they had to deal with the most desperate and fearless class of criminals the world ever knew. Robert R. Dalton, better known as Bob Dalton, served on the posses of his brothers, and soon learned what it was to stand up and shoot while being shot at. He turned out to be about the boldest of the family, and was accepted as the clan leader later on in their exploits. He also was a deputy United States marshal at the dangerous stations of Fort Smith and Wichita, having much to do with the desperadoes of the Nations. He was chief of the Osage police for some time, and saw abundance of violent scenes. Emmett Dalton was also possessed of cool nerve, and was soon known as a dangerous man to affront. All the boys were good shots, but they seemed to have cared more for the Winchester than the six-shooter in their exploits, in which they were perhaps wise, for the rifle is of course far the surer when it is possible of use; and men mostly rode in that country with rifle under leg.

Uncle Sam is obliged to take such material for his frontier peace officers as proves itself efficient in serving processes. A coward may be highly moral, but he will not do as a border deputy. The personal character of some of the most famous Western deputies would scarcely bear careful scrutiny, but the government at Washington is often obliged to wink at that sort of thing. There came a time when it remained difficult longer to wink at the methods of the Daltons as deputies. In one case they ran off with a big bunch of horses and sold them in a Kansas town. On account of this episode, Grattan, William, and Emmett Dalton made a hurried trip to California. Here they became restless, and went back at their old trade, thinking that no one even on the Pacific Slope had any right to cause them fear. They held up a train in Tulare county and killed a fireman, but were repulsed. Later arrested and tried, William was cleared, but Grattan was sentenced to twenty years in the penitentiary. He escaped from jail before he got to the penitentiary, and rejoined Emmett at the old haunts in the Nations, Emmett having evaded arrest in California. The Southern Pacific railway had a standing offer of $6,000 for the robbers at the time they were killed.

The Daltons were now more or less obliged to hide out, and to make a living as best they could, which meant by robbery. On May 9, 1891, the Santa Fe train was held up at Wharton, Oklahoma Territory, and the express car was robbed, the bandits supposedly being the Daltons. In June of the following year another Santa Fe train was robbed at Red Rock, in the Cherokee strip. The 'Frisco train was robbed at Vinita, Indian Territory. An epidemic of the old methods of the James and Younger bands seemed to have broken out in the new railway region of the Southwest. The next month the Missouri, Kansas and Texas train was held up at Adair, Indian Territory, and a general fight ensued between the robbers and the armed guard of the train, assisted by citizens of the town. A local physician was killed and several officers and citizens wounded, but none of the bandits was hurt, and they got away with a heavy loot of the express and baggage cars. At Wharton they had been less fortunate, for though they killed the station agent, they were rounded up and one of their men, Dan Bryant, was captured, later killing and being killed by United States deputy Ed. Short, as mentioned in an earlier chapter. Dick Broadwell joined the Dalton gang about now, and they nearly always had a few members besides those of their own family; their gang being made up and conducted on much the same lines of the James boys gang of Missouri, whose exploits they imitated and used as text for their bolder deeds. In fact it was the boast of the leader, Bob Dalton, in the Coffeyville raid, that he was going to beat anything the James boys ever did: to rob two banks in one town at the same time.

Bank robbing was a side line of activity with the Daltons, but they did fairly well at it. They held up the bank at El Reno, at a time when no one was in the bank except the president's wife, and took $10,000, obliging the bank to suspend business. By this time the whole country was aroused against them, as it had been against the James and Younger boys. Pinkerton detectives had blanket commissions offered, and railway and express companies offered rewards running into the thousands. Each train across the Indian Nations was accompanied for months by a heavily armed guard concealed in the baggage and express cars. Passengers dreaded the journey across that country, and the slightest halt of the train for any cause was sure to bring to the lips of all the word of fear, "the Daltons!" It seems almost incredible of belief that, in these modern days of fast railway service, of the telegraph and of rapidly increasing settlements, the work of these men could so long have been continued; but such, none the less, was the case. The law was powerless, and demonstrated its own unfitness to safeguard life and property, as so often it has in this country. And, as so often has been the case, outraged society at length took the law into its own hands and settled the matter.

The full tale of the Dalton robberies and murders will never be known, for the region in which they operated was reticent, having its own secrets to protect; but at last there came the climax in which the band was brought into the limelight of civilized publicity. They lived on the border of savagery and civilization. Now the press, the telegraph, the whole fabric of modern life, lay near at hand. Their last bold raid, therefore, in which they crossed from the country of reticence into that of garrulous news gathering, made them more famous than they had ever been before. The raid on Coffeyville, October 5, 1892, both established and ended their reputation as desperadoes of the border.

The rumor got out that the Daltons were down in the Nations, waiting for a chance to raid the town of Coffeyville, but the dreaded attack did not come off when it was expected. When it was delivered, therefore, it found the town quite unprepared. Bob Dalton was the leader in this enterprise. Emmett did not want to go. He declared that too many people knew them in Coffeyville, and that the job would prove too big for them to handle. He consented to join the party, however, when he found Bob determined to make the attempt in any case. There were in the band at that time Bob, Emmett, and Grattan Dalton, Bill Powers and Dick Broadwell. These lay in rendezvous near Tulsa, in the Osage country, two days before the raid, and spent the night before in the timber on Onion creek, not far below town. They rode into Coffeyville at half-past nine the following morning. The street being somewhat torn up, they turned aside into an alley about a hundred yards from the main street, and, dismounting, tied their horses, which were thus left some distance from the banks, the First National and the bank of C. M. Condon & Co., which were the objects of their design.

Grattan Dalton, Dick Broadwell and Bill Powers stepped over to the Condon bank, which was occupied at the time by C. T. Carpenter, C. M. Ball, the cashier, and T. C. Babb, a bookkeeper. Grattan Dalton threw down his rifle on Carpenter, with the customary command to put up his hands; the others being attended to by Powers and Broadwell. Producing a two-bushel sack, the leader ordered Carpenter to put all the cash into it, and the latter obeyed, placing three thousand dollars in silver and one thousand in currency in the sack. Grattan wanted the gold, and demanded that an inner safe inside the vault should be opened. The cashier, Ball, with a shifty falsehood, told him that they could not open that safe, for it was set on a time lock, and no one could open it before half-past nine o'clock. He told the outlaw that it was now twenty minutes after nine (although it was really twenty minutes of ten); and the latter said they could wait ten minutes. He was, however, uneasy, and was much of the mind to kill Ball on the spot, for he suspected treachery, and knew how dangerous any delay must be.

It was a daring thing to do—to sit down in the heart of a civilized city, in broad daylight and on the most public street, and wait for a time lock to open a burglar-proof safe. Daring as it was, it was foolish and futile. As the robbers stood uneasily guarding their prisoners, the alarm was spread. A moment later firing began, and the windows of the bank were splintered with bullets. The robbers were trapped, Broadwell being now shot through the arm, probably by P. L. Williams from across the street. Yet they coolly went on with their work as they best could, Grattan Dalton ordering Ball to cut the string of the bag and pour out the heavy silver, which would have encumbered them too much in their flight. He asked if there was not a back way out, by which they could escape. He was shown a rear door, and the robbers stepped out, to find themselves in the middle of the hottest street fight any of them had ever known. The city marshal, Charles T. Connolly, had given the alarm, and citizens were hurrying to the street with such weapons as they could find at the hardware stores and in their own homes.